You only have to look at the graph below showing sea level rise since 1880 to see that it has accelerated from about 1mm/year at the end of the 19th century to about 3mm/year at present.(from CSIRO).

If you take a closer look at recent sea level rise you’ll see that it has been very consistent, only deviating from the trend line by about 10mm at any time.

So if you were unscrupulous, and wanted to try to make it look like sea level rise had decelerated what could you do? You could split the series at a point where sea level was above the trend line and compare trends before and after. this is what Klaus-Eckart Puls did (green line added by me):

Of course, you could achieve the opposite effect by splitting at a point in time where sea level was below the trend line. Note that the trend for the first half, 3.5mm/year isn’t significantly different from the overall trend and that the latest measurement lies on the trend fitted to the first part of the data (the green line above).

Comments

As an interested layperson, I thought SD’s observation raised a fair point. If SLR over say 100 years is on average something like 200mm, you’d expect to see some effect from it. Most likely, higher high tides in particular. In physical terms, you’d see water reaching a higher level than it has done in the past. That’s the impact we could expect, and it’s what all the fuss is about.

SD notes that by his own obs, that hasn’t happened. I back this up, not with good quality controlled data, but simple real world observations. Because if there is no physical real world impact, then what does it matter what the graphs show?

Now, SD’s claim of a level sea surface etc I won’t go into, I have no idea whether that makes sense or not. But I AM curious about why my local sea front appears to be no different now to how it was 100 years ago if SLR is occurring and it is accelerating. Do I just happen to live somewhere that is not experiencing that degree of SLR, or is something else at play?

SD’s comment re MSL and high water makes sense too, but it’s just a thought, it’s not a claim backed by evidence. Is it possible for MSL to vary over a short term, say 50 years, but for max high water or even mean high water not to vary as much?

I noted something similar re the claims about Sandy. When it was claimed Sandy’s effect was exacerbated by SLR, I wondered how you’d tell that. Just to say that SLR since say 1960 is 150mm doesn’t mean, to my mind, that Sandy had that much extra sea level to play with.

I think you’d need to know how much different the sea level was for that particular tide in 1960 versus that tide in 2012. What I found was that it’s hard to make that assessment. I also couldn’t find that exact data. So, I used predicted tide heights for the periods that I could find. And here’s what I came up with. Yes, it’s a bit of a diversion from topic, but I still found it interesting.

First, tide heights at The Battery New York are calculated with reference to what is known as Mean Lower Low Water (MLLW). This is the datum point used with reference to the official Benchmark, and I’ll assume the Benchmark is on the land (well, it is in fact).

MLLW is the average of the lower low water height of each tidal day observed over the National Tidal Datum Epoch. The National Tidal Datum Epoch is the period over which a mean is set. The two most recent are the modern one which was set in the period 1983-2001 and the superceded one which covered 1960-1978.

For the prediction or measurement of tides, we use MLLW as the zero point, so in the data, it appears as zero. However, for the 1960-1978 period it was set at 936mm above the Benchmark and for the period 1983-2001 it was 1002mm. You can see therefore that in terms of these means, there is an increase of some 66mm. Anyways, without going into too much detail, what I did was to find the various tidal datums and adjusted for the MLLW figure. That is, Mean High Water today is 1443mm. Adding on the MLLW value of 1002mm gives us an actual value of 2445mm above the Benchmark (land). Does that make sense?

So, what are our figures?

We can use Mean Higher High Water, Mean High Water and Mean Low Water.

MHHW 2496 2543
MHW 2393 2445
MLW 1003 1065

Figures in absolute millimetres above the benchmark, 60-78 first and 83-01 second.

In this case, the tide of the day at the time of landfall was the High Water one, not the Higher High Water one. What was that predicted to be? 1444mm. Add our adjustment, and we get 2446mm.

You will see that is 53mm higher than the 1960-1978 mean, but bang on the money for the 1983-2001 mean. So, right there, we could argue for around 53mm of effect from SLR. However, the 2393mm number is a mean, and we can assume some tides were higher than that in that period (1960-78), so our number MAY be less than 53mm. Also, the land there is subsiding and I have no idea if that’s been adjusted for in the Benchmark values. I’ll assume it has been, but maybe not. So, our SLR effect seems to be somewhere between 0mm and 55mm. Let’s settle on that 53mm number.

This means that Hurricane Sandy may have had up to 53mm of extra sea level with which to work compared to if it had struck in 1960.

What do you think? This by the way isn’t meant to prove or disprove something, it’s just my own curiosity. And wondering if my train of thought makes sense?

You are making claims that invalidate SD’s reference point but they ARE just that, claims.

No, you’ve got it entirely backwards!

Refusing to accept unjustified claims IS NOT making a claim about those unjustified claims. This is a very similar concept to the (often poorly understood) fact that a jury refusing to find an accused guilty IS NOT claiming that the accused is innocent. (The accused may well have done it but there may be insufficiently good evidence to demonstrate it beyond a reasonable doubt.)

Your argument, if accepted, leads one to have to accept any all claims, even those that contradict a mass of evidence that refutes them, until those specific claims are demonstrated to be dodgy “beyond a reasonable doubt”. That is foolishness (although it may explain how Spangled Drongo manages to make two simultaneous claims that contradict each other, and doesn’t withdraw either of them even when it is pointed out).

To put it another way, science is inherently skeptical – and your stance is inherently gullible. Being actually skeptical – not the faux skepticality that is the stock in trade of SD’s sources like Watts Up With That and Jo Nova and is heavily based on the application of scientific incompetence – is a process of taking ALL the evidence and inferring the best explanation for it.

Let’s unpack SD’s set of claims and see how well he does on that front.

0. SD claims (implicitly) to have made accurate observations of river levels at Nerang over 70 years or so.

1. SD claims (explicitly) that these river level observations ARE accurate sea level observations for the sea near the river level observation point.

2. SD claims that because the ocean is quite flat from a large scale perspective, that small scale sea level variations simply cannot exist.

3. Accordingly SD claims that his “sea level” (yes, chameleon, THOSE are scare quotes) observations are ALSO accurate sea level observations for the entire globe.

For (0), I don’t see anyone here bothering to comment on it because the claims aren’t considered relevant to the topic at hand.

For (1) there is considerable justifiable scientific skepticism, precisely because scientists know there are a number of factors that affect river levels besides sea levels at the river mouth. In other words, there is other evidence on this point, and the best inference from all the evidence is “river levels 7km from the mouth don’t provide a good quality measure of sea level at the river mouth”. Even worse is the fact that the OTHER strong inference is “if you want to get a good quality measure of sea level this can be done by measuring the level of the sea, not the level of a nearby river”.

For (2) we don’t even need scientific skepticism. As demonstrated above SD’s argument is innumerate – it relies on not understanding basic arithmetic! It is also self-refuting because (as demonstrated above) in order to make it he has to rely on scientific data showing the instantaneous variations in sea level across the globe, but the VERY SAME DATA SET shows that some places are experiencing sea level rise at the same time as some are not. He can’t legitimately rely on it AND dismiss it at the same time.

But if you apply scientific skepticism it gets worse, because one can clearly see that SD is blatantly cherry-picking the very small set of data he likes (“Nerang river levels!” And a couple more sites!) and trying to argue from that as if the rest does not exist. That is simply NOT inferring the best explanation from all the evidence. That is called cherry-picking.

For (3) we only need logic applied to SD’s failure to establish (1) and (2). Or we can apply scientific skepticism by looking at ALL the data, including the mass of data that SD desperately wants to ignore. When you do that the overwhelmingly strong conclusion is that yes – global average sea levels ARE rising and have been for quite some time.

“The billiard table principle tells us exactly nothing about sea level, so is not more reliable than anything.”

Neil White, what the BTP tells us emphatically is that SL equilibrium is so aggressive that it is only upset for relatively short periods by forces such as trade winds and currents and only as long as those forces continue to apply.

Even with those forces being applied the world’s oceans are still flatter than a billiard table which means that SLR will show itself all over the world if it is truly happening.

For example, the City of the Gold Coast and the bayside suburbs of Brisbane have enormous ocean, broadwater, bayside, estuarine, tidal river, tidal canal etc sea frontage yet those cities’ coastal scientists, when asked directly, cannot pinpoint anywhere that SLR is happening.

Because if there is no physical real world impact, then what does it matter what the graphs show?

Have you realised yet that this is an argument from personal ignorance which is a well known fallacy?

You keep pretending that you ONLY have your own local observations, despite other impacts having been pointed out to you already (e.g. Miami).

If you actually wanted to find out what the impacts to date have been you could go looking for work that describes it. I get the strong impression that you are far more interested in reiterating your pre-existing point of view than finding out whether it is anywhere near the best inference from ALL the evidence.

And true to form Spangled Drongo ignores all of the points that refute the conclusions he seeks to draw from his “billiard table principle” by re-asserting it. I reckon we’ll see another dozen re-assertions on this thread yet.

I suspect he has a read-only brain, as no new facts ever seem to penetrate it.

Just to say that SLR since say 1960 is 150mm doesn’t mean, to my mind, that Sandy had that much extra sea level to play with.

And after all the explanation to date, that is an inordinately stupid point of view to cling to. By definition if local sea levels have risen by 150mm then Sandy has 150mm more to play with than it would have had if the sea level had not risen.

Think of it as Neil puts it – sea level rise is the equivalent of having more water in the sea. 150mm more in the case you are talking about. That 150mm of extra water doesn’t magically disappear or go somewhere else for the weekend when a large storm shows up.

SD notes that by his own obs, that hasn’t happened. I back this up, not with good quality controlled data, but simple real world observations. Because if there is no physical real world impact, then what does it matter what the graphs show?

Florida, Sandy, high tides on the Pacific islands, whatever; the point is that if we separated the component you refuse to accept emotionally and just treat the tide values as numbers you wouldn’t – well, Spangly might – deny that the numbers are increasing, and that while you can finagle and nitpick the real-world impact at the moment we are now locked in to SLR for centuries.

When those numbers get high enough no amount of local variation is going to overwhelm the trend sufficiently to convince anyone – except, again, the Spanglys of this world, for whom the term ‘denier’ was made – that we don’t have a serious problem.

This is so obvious that one is constantly left wondering if one is confronting bad logic or bad faith. Both, probably.

David Benson. “Not bad, although I think your values are considerably inflated. Note that about 1/2 of that extra is due to local land subsidence.”

I used the values from the tide data at that NOAA site. I assumed they might already factor out land subsidence when setting the baseline for each tidal epoch. For example, the 936mm for MLLW was changed to 1002mm in the current epoch. Do you think that’s a raw unadjusted value?

If though we could assume that around 50% of the values has been contributed by way of subsidence, does that suggest something like 25mm of SLR in the past 50 years that contributed to sandy’s impact?

Note I am NOT saying there was only 25mm of SLR when the data seems to indicate around 150mm rise in MSL, I was only trying to figure out how much the actual tide of the time might have been affected by SLR.

Bill, there is nothing I am trying to refuse ’emotionally’. I was simply saying that my own personal highly anecdotal untested uncontrolled vague observations appear to indicate that possibly the sea level at my local beach maybe hasn’t changed in the past 100 years.

So, I wonder why that is. And it ties in with what someone, SD in this case, has actually physically recorded at a real world location.

David Benson, I’ve read that report before. I thought those values were the raw unadjusted data? The following tables show the various factors to be adjusted in, that is the vertical movement of the station and barometric effects. So the raw figure for say Cocos Island (8mm/yr) is adjusted back to 3.4mm/yr in table 5. Am I misreading that?

Note too that these are very short term measures and as they note,

“It is important to emphasise that as the ABSLMP sea level records increase in length, the sea level trend estimates will continue to stabilise and become more indicative of longerterm changes. Caution must be exercised in interpreting the ‘short-term’ relative sea level trends (Table 2) as they are based on short records in climate terms and are still undergoing large year-to-year changes. “

The NOAA site for The Battery tide gauge had rather smaller numbers than you used which is why I suggested a smaller figure. Since there is no indication from NOAA that the data has been adjusted for subsidence I assume that it has not been; that might be wrong.

Well, in practically every case, no matter how well-founded the predictions and even in cases where subsequent events confirmed the predictions to be accurate, the “doom” predictors were derided by people operating from much less well-founded bases as being full of it.

I take it that’s what you meant. Maybe there is some self-awareness creeping in.

What, like the Aztecs who claimed that the coming of the Conquistadors was going to be a disaster? (Not to mention all those tribes whose names we don’t even know!) The Jews, Trade Unionists, Social-Democrats and Communists who thought Nazism was going to be a catastrophe? Ditto the Poles and the Russians who fretted as the Wehrmacht rolled in? The residents of Hiroshima who looked up at the sky on August 6th, 1945 and thought ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this…’?

Alarmists, eh?

Again, we see the gap between the ‘gut’, talk-back radio, smug suburban ‘reality’ in Spangly’s head, and the world itself.

Deny it as you will, we are now locked into SLR for centuries – it is the rate that will determine the seriousness of the impact; only the foolish insist that rate will be manageable ‘because catastrophes cannot happen because [smug]’,and only the most extreme fools deny the laws of physics and mathematics in order to deny the rise itself.

“Neil White, what the BTP tells us emphatically is that SL equilibrium is so aggressive that it is only upset for relatively short periods by forces such as trade winds and currents and only as long as those forces continue to apply.”

Please explain the BTP. It sound like a load of bollocks to me, but please explain it and how it supports your statements about sea level aggressively seeking equilibrium.

I mean actually explain it, not just make a series of assertions!

On a related subject, tell us more about you observations of SL at your site. There was, apparently a very high level ~70 years ago. You claim that it has never been higher since. How do you know this? Have you checked the SL at every high tide (twice a day, no matter what time of day or night) for the last 70 years, or what? How do you know some rogue high tide didn’t sneak through while you were off ocean racing or on holiday or something?

As I understand it the main tidal component in your area is M2 (lunar semi-diurnal) with a period of 12 hours and 24 minutes. Is that correct?

I see that the stupid sack of dishonest shit, chameleon, not only couldn’t stick the flounce but has become a fucking regular troll. And you neurotics continue to while away your lives debating these specimens of intellectual and moral putrefaction. It’s a sign of depression, y’know.

Neil White, I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you about the BTP. What is it you don’t get about the sea being flatter than a BT if there are no forces acting upon it but even when they do and the hills and valleys are at their max of around half a meter, it is still a hundred times flatter than a BT.

That’s some equilibrium!

If enough ice was melteing say, at both poles to raise SLs 6 inches world wide, how long do you think it would take for that SLR to be observed all around the world in light of that vigorous equilibrium seeking and finding?

Bernard J and Lotharsson, you say that SD’s point of measurement is in a river some distance from the sea. I agree with that and I can see the case for the confounding factors.

It’s more than “a case for the confounding factors” – it’s the unavoidability of the confounding factors.

You are making claims that invalidate SD’s reference point but they ARE just that, claims. I doubt you have any actual evidence of the effects of those factors for this particular location.

Eh?! You must be joking!

As others have said it’s Drongo’s responsibility to demonstrate that the manifold confounding phenomena are not acting on his river wall – after all, he’s the one who is using his anecdotal observations to contradict professional scientists.

1) Barometric pressure significantly alters tidal heights. Inescapable fact. Drongo has shown no record of barometric pressure at the times of his “king tides”, let alone any indication that he had compensated for the effect of barometric pressure on tidal maxima.

2) Flooding affects tidal heights in rivers. Inescapable fact. Drongo’s argument was that the flooding that occurred during at least one one of his “king tides” had no effect.

3) Alterations of a river’s hydrology through bank engineering, canal development, drainage construction and so on have effects on its flow, and thus on its height. Inescapable fact.

4) At the other end, alterations of a river’s mouth, and/or of its estuarine profile, have effects on its flow, and thus of its height. Inescapable fact.

5) The same is the case with regional ocean currents.

6) Oh, and remember way back in 2010 when Drongo confused the concept of highest astronomical tides with kings tides? (Ah, those were the days… actually, they’re still the days…) One of the variables mentioned then was that the moon’s apsides have a bearing on the tide heights from year to year. I tried to get that idea to take root in Drongo’s mind, too, but it proved to be a barren bed for such germination.

All of these factors (and more) have a critical influence on riverine/estuarine height. You can doubt as much as you like that I don’t have “any actual evidence of the effects of those factors for this particular location”, but the matter does not require that I “have evidence” – parsimony and the very ubiquity of the laws of physics say that these phenomena occur in this instance just as they would elsewhere, and the whole point of this three year discussion is to elicite from Drongo the reasons why he assumes that none of them affect his anecdotal observations.

Drongo has made countless faux pas of basic science and statistics in this epic adherence to a fantasy meme. I mentioned many recently, but one other that is worth raising was his referral to a linear trendline applied to an oscillating phenomenon. I’ll leave it to your to track the original posts it you feel so inclined, but the basic point is demonstrated here in the graph demolishing Drongo’s red herring. I’d still like to have a detailed reply from Drongo on this matter…

For this to be so, those factors have to just happen to have constrained sea level rise to show no effect at that location.

Drongo is not only not claiming “no effect”, he is claiming (based on riverine observations) that there is a decrease in sea level. My argument is that the confounders are not acting to neutralise sea level, but that if Drongo’s observations are reliable then these confounders are resulting in this net decrease.

Once again, for the slow of learning, Drongo has shown no accounting for these inherently present factors.

So isn’t it a bit of a reach to claim those factors have so nicely offset SLR over 70 years?

See above.

But please explain why it is not “a bit rich” to expect that none of these confounders are integral in Drongo’s observations.

2) The “sea” is not aggressively level. Watch the waves. Watch a tide. Watch two ocean currents meet. There are multiple forces continuously acting on the oceans to ensure that they are never “level”.

3) Drongo’s been given reasons for disparities in local sea level trend compared with global sea level trend. He’s simply been ignoring for three years the many confounders of sea level dynamics. It seems that you have boarded his boat…

Is it possible that while MSL has risen, actual highest high water for his location has not increased by much if at all due to the local confounding factors?

Absolutely. See the list above, and frequently posted previously.

Measuring sea level rise in a river is no different to sticking a thermometer in your arse to measure Drongo’s fever.

…there has never been a question about whether his data is quality controlled or not. It hasn’t been. As far as I am concerned, he could have made it all up. What SD is saying is that his own personal observations over time are that the sea level (and here I think he means max high water) has not increased. I echoed that from my own personal experience.

Uncontrolled personal experience recounted without evidence by lay people with a demonstrated ideological aversion to the science hardly constitutes anything remotely resembling reliability. All the more so when none of the countering science put forward has been addressed, let alone refuted.

As an interested layperson, I thought SD’s observation raised a fair point.

As an ideologically-biased lay person who’s happy to accept claims by someone who “could have made it all up”, you seem unable to understand that Drongo has no point at all.

SD notes that by his own obs, that hasn’t happened. I back this up, not with good quality controlled data, but simple real world observations.

In other words you back it up with nothing more than hearsay. I could just as validly say that you engage in transvestitism, and claim my own “simple real world observations”, but I suspect that you’d demand more evidence than just my word for it…

Now, SD’s claim of a level sea surface etc I won’t go into, I have no idea whether that makes sense or not.

Believe me, it does not.

And it’s telling that you “have no idea”.

I was simply saying that my own personal highly anecdotal untested uncontrolled vague observations appear to indicate that possibly the sea level at my local beach maybe hasn’t changed in the past 100 years.

Such data could also show that sea level has risen by a metre, or dropped by a metre.

Within the parameters set by your statement, that is.

And it ties in with what someone, SD in this case, has actually physically recorded at a real world location.

But that’s the thing – Drongo has proffered not a decimal point of physical evidence.

Which is the sorry end to this sad tale of denialist writhing.

However, having had the chance to put a torpedo through Drongo’s hero John Daly it hasn’t been all wasted. And it’s probably a good refresher for some people with respect to the complexities of sea level rise.

Note: Be fully prepared for the denier pundits and general assortment of Dunning-Kruger acolytes withy no scientific background whatsoever to dismiss the findings of this study. Its par for the course. Jonas has mastered tha art. The strategy: Don’t do any science yourself, but feel free to smear, impugn, denigrate et al. scientists and their research if it doesn’t fit in with your own pre-determined world view. The more esteemed the scientist is, and the more their views differ with the deniers, the more they must be smeared.

“Alterations of a river’s hydrology through bank engineering, canal development, drainage construction and so on have effects on its flow, and thus on its height. Inescapable fact.”

From the abstract of the paper I posted last night:

“Gold Coast Seaway and Jumpinpin Bar are two tidal inlets that connect the Pacific Ocean to the extensive Gold Coast estuarine system. While the Gold Coast Seaway has been stabilized in the mid-1980s by two rock walls, Jumpinpin Bar has remained a highly dynamic tidal inlet.”

I watched an episode of Africa: David Attenborough’s new BBC1 series the other evening and one sequence was of a Drongo fooling a family of meerkats. One smart bird that Drongo, shame about the critter that appears here.

Worth a watch is that programme if you can get it, astonishing find of ‘fossil water’ in a large water system under the Namib reached by long descent down ropes.

I think SD is on about his billiard table principle but he failed to carry out one of the basic rules of technical writing which is to immediately follow with the acronym later used unsupported as in this, ‘billiard table principle (BTP)’.

Of course SD has probably never had to write so precisely before.

BTP itself fails, here is why.

Scale! Humans and the same scale to the nap of a billiard table vis a vis the size of your typical ocean would belong to the ‘where the fuck are we tribe’. Rugby players will know about this from the song ‘The Wild West Show’, the tribe lost and jumping up and down in long grass shouting ‘WTFAW! WTFAW!’

Neil White, when the various canal developments around Runaway Bay, Biggera Waters etc were built as far back as nearly 50 years ago, the local council required them to put in retaining walls to the then king tide datum. This makes observations quite easy. These estates are very close to the Seaway yet they do not show SLR at king tides.

A mate of mine has had a slipway-boat building business in this area since 1957. When you are trying to slip and launch boats you have to work tides and look for the last inch of high water sometimes, to be successful. He has several slipways and would like nothing better than some SLR.

The thing is, ARE they wrong? The point I made earlier is a simple one. Regardless of what the data shows about trends in MSL, it is actual on the ground effects that count. So when concern is expressed about sea level rise, it’s not about the graphs per se, it is about what will happen on the ground.

SLR can be expected to cause more frequent flooding from extreme events at a minimum, but as the rise continues we can expect to see generally higher water levels and that MUST result in visible effects, even to the average Joe. So, has it?

All I’ve observed is that, from a real world perspective, I haven’t noticed anything substantially different at my coastal location. Sure that’s just anecdotal and I don’t dispute that. Nor do I dispute the tide gauge data. But it is real world effects that count.

So, just to bring that point home, rather than disputing SD’s obs, can you offer a single example of a real effect of rising sea levels on Australia’s east coast? I’m not saying there are none, but if over 100 years we have seen what is it, 200mm of rise, there MUST be some examples to choose from.

For the benefit of the Doltoids here who can’t read a map, Runaway Bay and Biggera Waters are right on the Broadwater, ~ one nm from the Seaway just behind Wavebreak Island where the cruiseship terminal is planned.

These represent about another dozen or so personal observations that falsify SLR.

Have you found any observations of your own yet?

And do try not to get your observations confused with your obfuscations.

Yes David B
It is always a good idea to read the caveats.
It is there we discover a level of certainty.
It is also where they refer to which variables or forcings have been isolated and used.
From your link:
“For the twentieth century, the models used observed changes in greenhouse gas concentrations and other climatic forcings while, for the twenty-first century, they used greenhouse-gas emissions from the IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES).
It should be noted that there is no firm theoretical or observational basis for this scaled-up ice sheetdischarge. The AR4 explicitly states that larger rises cannot be excluded and its projections for sea-level rise do not give a best estimate or an upper bound.
Note that since publication of the AR4, Pfeffer et al. (2008) have argued that a rise in excess of 2 metres is “physically untenable,” and that a maximum rise of 0.8 metres (near the upper end of the IPCC AR4 projections) is more plausible.”

For a little bit of contrast, here is some information from the 1970’s.
I am just old enough to remember these alarming reports and I also remember being very concerned about them and wondering why nobody was doing anything about it.
Just to put my own caveat on this piece, I do not like the overall sarcastic tone of the piece but I did enjoy reading and thus reminiscing over the old reports.http://www.climatedepot.com/a/3213/Dont-Miss-it-Climate-Depots-Factsheet-on-1970s-Coming-Ice-Age-Claims
And finally,
I am surprised that people who claim that they understand basic physics cannot understand what spangled is trying to explain to you.
Water follows the laws of gravity. It does ‘aggressively seek equilibrium’.
If there was alarming SLR it should first appear noticeable in areas like the area spangled is describing.
They are low lying coastal areas.

David B,
Do you mean because it was hit by hurricane Sandy?
Of course that was alarming.
Any major storm that approaches a heavily urbanised area anywhere in the world is alarming and they can cause much damage to human infrastructure.
That is not a new phenomenon and not relevant to my comment above.
The fact that councils, governments, developers etcetera have not sufficiently planned for these inevitable major storm events is not a new phenomenon either.
I will hazard a guess that people who are in low lying areas in spangled’s area will rightly get very alarmed when cyclones are approaching and that surges from major storms cause them grief as well.

And BFPM, you’re no better. Keeriste – ‘sure, the data shows the oceans have risen, but I’m not seeing any effects at this arbitrary point I rather like for that reason’!

How frickin’ dumb can you be? The oceans rise 200mm on the way to 2m, and this lot moon around complaining that ‘well, I haven’t seen any sign of the kind of impacts you’d expect from 2m of sea-level rise’. And then fold their arms and smirk as though it was someone other than them who was the drooling loboto-beast from Planet Dim!

Well, don’t sweat it, Sunshine, because, as has been pointed out multiple times we are now locked in to SLR for centuries, including a substantial rise this century, and eventually no-one anywhere will be in any doubt as to the impact, cherry-pick and look the other way as they may.

I intend to link back to precisely this discussion to show what grotesque and insouciant foolishness we had to contend with.

Look Bill, in the case of local obs, I am not arguing anything about what tide gauges show, nor am I arguing about what long term trends might be.

I am just observing that after 150 years of SLR as evidenced by the graphs on this original post, and bearing in mind we are told that this rise is accelerating, I am asking a simple question.

Can you point to a single case of effect on the Australian coastline that confirms tide gauge data trends? I’m NOT saying there isn’t. However, from what I can see with my own eyes, nothing much has changed. SD observes the same with something a little more concrete. We may be quite wrong.

But it’s a simple enough ask. Where are your real world obs of sea level against a land based benchmark over say the past 100 years that backs up the graphs and trends shown in this post. Because it’s actual effects against land based structures that count in evaluating past trends and impacts and help inform about the future.

Vince,
Did you notice what the qualified expert professionals were telling you in the ’70’s from my link above?
All the current work points out in the caveats that they are not accountable for the future climate or future SLR.
They are observing trends using various methodologies and increasing access to data bases.
They do not claim those observed trends are infinite or indefinite.
Trends have a historical tendency to reverse or change in nature and climate. Hence such things as the LIA and the Holocene.
(IMHO), in varying ways, Spangled D and BoltFPM are referring to the very well known physical relationship between water and gravity.
Even ordinary, everyday people understand that relationship and how it works.
Most of us ordinary folk got the basics of that one figured out as small children when we played with hoses and buckets, made sand castles on the beach and various other games with water

Yes – for the SLR claims that are made from them. As has been explained to you a dozen different ways already.

Sure that’s just anecdotal and I don’t dispute that.

What you dispute is the careful rigorous data collection on the basis of anecdotal retrospective recollection, which is foolish on a number of levels. Human recall – for one thing – is notoriously unreliable, especially for very slow changes.

But instead of looking at the broader data you keep right on foolishly focusing on your own anecdotes. It’s almost like you don’t care about being right as long as you get to claim that your existing point of view isn’t actually challenged…

I’m challenging you to actually put up.

You’ve ALREADY been presented with evidence of SLR around Australia – and in other places. There’s no indication that you are capable of recognising “putting up”. And logic isn’t your strong suit either:

Because it’s actual effects against land based structures that count in evaluating past trends and impacts and help inform about the future.

No.

Ponder the reason why “[past] actual effects against land based structures” are not necessary and not anywhere near as informative as, well, actual science.

After the hurricane season.
Huge.
Turned back by the effects of AGW on summer ice in the Arctic.
It is entirely relevant to your comment above because Sandy did more damage than it would have done without 40cm of mean sea level rise.

Ah, the classic denialist trope! Whodathunk chameleon would resort to another one of those?! 😉 Anyone wanna take bets on the next one to surface?

Pretty much everyone here already knows why this claim is hokum, so I’ll urge chameleon to go to that link, read and comprehend, and then start exploring the “Further Reading” links.

Amusingly it illustrates the problems with relying on personal anecdotes – the science of the day never came to a consensus predicting an imminent ice age, even though (with the “help” of people like Morano and the fact that there were a few low quality media stories back then) people reckon they remember it doing so. It also illustrates the severe asymmetry in chameleon’s arguments – citing completely unreliable sources like Morano as “support”, but worse still citing caveats on present day evidence she doesn’t like, but completely eliding the much much larger caveats from evidence she uses as “support”.

But while we’re here let’s look at Morano’s first example from “A Small Sampling of 1970’s Reports Warning of Global Cooling” to see how Morano sucked in gullible people like chameleon:

National Academy of Sciences Issued Report Warning of Coming Ice Age in 1975

Excerpt: “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.” – Newsweek – April 28, 1975 “The Cooling World”

The first thing one would expect someone with unspecified “academic science qualifications” to note is that Morano claims this is an example of a “report warning of global cooling”, when his quote says no such thing. No, really, it does not! Go, read. I’ll wait.

You see it now, don’t you? It is a quote about a scenario that might or might not eventuate, but there is no prediction of it happening any time soon. It’s not even about whether it will eventuate, but about the consequences (if it were to happen) due to impacts on global food supply and population locations.

Surely you’d think if he had a case that his very first example would clearly support it? And surely you’d think the average reasonably smart reader would pick this up – and begin to suspect that Morano was at the very least heavily gilding the lily? A reasonably smart reader might then use Teh Google to see if there were other opinions about the claims being made, and weigh up which were better supported. They might end up here where there’s an article surveying the science of the day (and a link to the author’s website on the topic).

The second thing one would expect someone with unspecified “academic science qualifications” to note is that Morano does NOT even support his claim by citing the 1975 NAS report! He instead links to a copy of a mainstream media article (Newsweek)! Wonder why? Well, no doubt he’s keen that readers do not discover this quote from it:

…we do not have a good quantitative understanding of our climate machine and what determines its course. Without the fundamental understanding, it does not seem possible to predict climate…

For chameleon’s benefit, that quote directly refutes the claim Morano is making. Chameleon, you are far too gullible to be lecturing other people on what the science says or doesn’t say – or said or didn’t say.

BFPM – precisely how much ‘effect’ could you expect at 200mm? Therefore it, what, hasn’t happened? Well, there’s Sandy, the Pacific Islands, Florida, etc., but you’re going to use the time-worn denialist tactic of demanding to see an effect precisely in those areas where one has not been clear to date!

And you can doubt the future trends because you can’t see your effect despite the rise so far? Are you seriously denying that when it hits 500mm or a metre, then local variation will not be able to overwhelm the overall signal?

At that point no-one will be in any doubt as to what’s happening, and they will have zero chance of doing anything about it because complacent ninnies chose to play these games back in the time we could have!

Do you have any functional capacity to assess a risk, do you suppose? It’s like the joke about the guy being swallowed by an anaconda, complacently announcing when it reaches his knees ‘I’m alright so far’.

It’s actually hard to believe that adults who can stand upright, pay their utility bills, figure out their mobile phones, and make their way to the polling booth could be so mind-numbingly dense!

Speaking of mind-numbingly dense – there’s Spangly. Spangly, could you calculate your own dimensions scaled down to fit your billiard table, please, and then tell us how frickin’ flat the felt and table would look from there?

And, completing the Unholy Triumvirate of the Obtuse, we have Chammy, who indulges in a little of the swaggering low-brow triumphalism that comes so easily to those who imagine that the ‘revelation’ that ‘no-one can know for sure exactly what is going to happen in the future’ is, like, abstruse philosophy, y’know, available only to the really-brainy elect, and an unchallengeable trump at the same time! And then we get the folksy wise-woman crap about buckets and spades…

The scary thing is you really all do imagine that you’re clever, don’t you? No wonder we’re in the position we’re in!…

Did you notice what the qualified expert professionals were telling you in the ’70′s from my link above?

Yes.

The qualified experts weren’t saying what you claim they were saying, as my previous comment indicates.

All the current work points out in the caveats that they are not accountable for the future climate or future SLR.

Assuming by “not accountable” you mean “are not reliable predictors of”, then no. ONE of the “current works” does so. Logic really isn’t your strong suit, is it? ONE is not ALL.

You clearly haven’t read much – if any – of the literature and I doubt you’ve read the IPCC summary of the literature either.

I suspect you don’t have much understanding of the idea of confidence intervals either, as you seem to frame things in black or white terms rather than “what our best understanding is and how confident we are of it”.

Ummm Lotharsson?
Did you perhaps miss the caveat I put with that link?
I didn’t make any claims.
Also, you also seemed to have completely forgotten me commenting that I learned some time ago that playing at arguing academic semantics is a waste of time.
So you are sort of wasting your time trying to make me play that game. It’s boring as in Zzzzzzzzzzz.
I think I also mentioned that I don’t regard you as my lecturer or teacher and that I don’t require you to hand out pass and fail marks so you’re sort of wasting your time there too.
But if you’re enjoying it, please don’t let me stop you.
But you are definitely wasting your time with that one.
I am guessing that Vince or Bill or Wow etcetera can actually answer their own direct questions if they want to BTW.
When I have an actual question for you, I’ll make it clear it was for you

Earlier on this never ending thread I worked out an approximate 36 mm/K of SLR due to thermal expansion of the oceans. Warming is about 0.02 K/yr, giving about 0.72 mm/yr of SLR due to thermal expansion alone.

Here’s a direct question for you Lotharsson,
If you’re rejecting what Spangled is claiming, does that mean you deny that water and gravity have a very strong and overriding physical relationship that causes water to aggressively seek equilibrium?
Because that was what I understood spangled was claiming from a large number of spangled’s comments.

But even if I had, demonstrating that your sources are bullshit – and the claims you are trying to introduce whilst denying you are “making claims” – is worthwhile. It shows (again) that you don’t know what you’re talking about and are almost completely unable to distinguish crap from gold. It also shows to anyone who’s uninformed but interested in what’s true that the claims in your link are bullshit.

I didn’t make any claims.

Yet another instance of the (attempted) plausible deniability gambit, analogous to the JAQing off tactic.

Would you prefer if I said “you introduced claims (that are bullshit)”? I’d be very surprised if you even grokked the distinction, given that you normally run roughshod over other people’s nuance. Or would you prefer if I said “you apparently didn’t realise that you made some claims”?

And then there’s this where you use the link as part of at least one claim:

Did you notice what the qualified expert professionals were telling you in the ’70′s from my link above?

Feel free to elaborate on what specific claims you had in mind when you wrote that comment, because based on what you wrote I can think of several that range from disingenuous to mendacious. And even in the most charitable reading of your comment you were trying to make a point that can and should be made using a fair representation of scientific thought. So why did you choose a particularly bad example?

Also, you also seemed to have completely forgotten me commenting that I learned some time ago that playing at arguing academic semantics is a waste of time.

I have not forgotten. It’s certainly foolish to think that you are interested in learning, but that’s not why I’m doing it. It’s not all about you.

In addition, dubbing something “academic semantics” doesn’t make the problems with your comments go away, or make them irrelevant. Does that actually work on people you normally converse with? And how many times are you going to try it before you realise it doesn’t work here, and neither does telling people that (you’d very much like them to stop deconstructing your crap and you hope they’ll find it persuasive if you say) “because it’s a waste of time”?

I am aware of that David B,
And I read your links.
Of course there are other influences. And when other influences operate they can temporarily alter what water levels will do.
But nonetheless, gravity is the major influence when it comes to water levels.
That includes the gravitational influence of the moon.
On your point of thermal expansion, do your figures also account for evaporation?
That is another well known physical relationship between water and the atmosphere.
Where I am today the thermometers are reading over 45 C.
The bodies of water around us are definitely not rising due to thermal expansion, they are rapidly decreasing due to evaporation.
And Bill,
A caveat is a caveat. Scientists use them all the time.
I actually quoted one from David B’s CSIRO link above.
I gues you could say it’s like crossing your fingers behind your back, but it’s a perfectly acceptable practice to qualify and/or put a caveat on something.

I see you have failed to comprehend my several detailed comments on why SD’s claims about global SLR are not justified by his observations. Once you demonstrate that you have understood those I’m quite happy to answer questions such as these – but once you achieve that understanding you may find the question is moot, and perhaps even embarrassing.

Failing that, you might want to take a crack at figuring out how a phenomenon of “aggressively seeking equilibrium” refutes any – ideally all – of those reasons for rejection.

Or if that’s too much like hard work, ask SD to precisely define the undefined term “aggressively seeking equilibrium”. Hint: if his definition is unquantifiable you might want to consider how he can make quantifiable claims based on asserting the phenomenon’s existence. Similarly, if his definition is only quantifiable in relative terms, you may wish to ponder how he can make quantifiable claims in absolute terms.

The bodies of water around us are definitely not rising due to thermal expansion, they are rapidly decreasing due to evaporation.

True, but I suspect on this point you’re conflating short term effects with long term trends. You (might?) also be referring to relatively small water sources rather than the global ocean.

To investigate your question you might want to look at where evaporated water can go, and for how long, before returning to the oceans. Are there any long term trends in the volume of water in those other places? How do the changes in volume compare to the changes in ocean volume due to expansion?

But more simply go back and figure out how David calculated a rough thermal expansion coefficient. I’m pretty sure his procedure answers your question.